This disclosure relates to electric rope shovels, and, more particularly, to ways to prevent the electric rope shovel dipper and attachments on the end of the shovel handle from contacting the remainder of the shovel.
FIG. 1 is an illustration of an electric rope shovel. The shovel 8 includes a dipper 22 for gathering material from a bank (not shown) and then moving the material to either a material pile (not shown) or a truck (not shown) for removing the material from the work site.
The power shovel 8 includes a platform in the form of a machinery deck 13, and an upwardly extending boom 15 connected at the lower end 16 to the platform 13, and a sheave 17 at the top of the boom 15. The dipper 22 is suspended from the boom 15 by a hoist rope 23 trained over the sheave 17 and attached to the dipper 22 at a bail pin 30. The machine structure is movable to locate the dipper 22 in respective loaded and unloading positions. More particularly, the structure is mounted on a turntable 12.
The power shovel 8 comprises a mobile base 10 supported on drive tracks 11, and having supported thereon through the turntable 12, the machinery deck 13. The turntable 12 permits full 360° rotation of the machinery deck 13 relative to the base.
The boom 15 is pivotally connected at 16 to the machinery deck 13. The boom 15 is held in a upwardly and outwardly extending relation to the deck 13 by a brace in the form of tension cables 18 which are anchored to a back stay 19 of a stay structure 20 rigidly mounted on the machinery deck 13.
The dipper 22 is suspended by the hoist rope or cable 23 from the sheave 17, the hoist rope 23 being anchored to a winch drum 24 mounted on the machinery deck 13. As the winch drum 24 rotates, the hoist rope 23 is either paid out or pulled in, lowering or raising the dipper 22. The dipper 22 has a handle 25 rigidly attached thereto, with the dipper handle 25 slidably supported in a saddle block 26, which is pivotally mounted on the boom 15 at 27. The dipper handle 25 has a rack tooth formation thereon (not shown) which engages a drive pinion (not shown) mounted in the saddle block 26. The drive pinion is driven by an electric motor and transmission unit 28 to effect extension or retraction of the dipper handle 25 relative to the saddle block 26.
A source of electrical power (not shown) is mounted on the machinery deck 13 to provide power to one or more hoist electric motors (not shown) that drives the winch drum 24, a crowd electric motor (not shown) that drives the saddle block transmission unit 28, and a swing electric motor (not shown) that turns the machinery deck turntable 12. The above described basic construction of the shovel loader is widely known and used and further details of the construction are not provided as they are well known in the art.
Each of the crowd, hoist, and swing motors is driven by its own motor controller (not shown) which responds to operator commands to generate the required voltages and currents in well known fashion. Interposed between the operator commands and the motor controllers is a programmable logic controller (PLC). The PLC includes a program that, in response to different conditions, causes the motor controllers to behave in a predetermined manner, as described below.
When the dipper moves relative to the boom, it is possible for the dipper to come into contact with the boom. In order to prevent this, the control system used to control the motors that move the handle in and out, and the hoist rope up and down, are monitored. The rotation of the crowd (handle) and hoist (rope) motors are counted, and based on these counts, assumptions are made regarding whether or not the crowd or handle position will cause the dipper to contact the boom, or whether the length of the hoist rope will cause the dipper to contact the boom. Based on these counts, boom limits in the motor control help prevent the dipper and attachments from contacting the boom or machinery deck.
The purpose of the boom limits thus is to prevent collisions between the attachment and the boom of a shovel. More particularly, the purpose of the boom limit system is to prevent the shovel attachment (handle, dipper, and bail) from making contact with the boom, as well as the over-run of the handle, and excessive rope pay out. The large mass and amount of force that can be generated by the attachment, impacting the boom can cause stress fractures and rapidly reduce the lifespan of the shovel frontend equipment. Due to the large mass and fast motion of the attachment the drives may require some time to slow down and then stop any motion that is destined for a collision.
FIGS. 2, 3, and 4 illustrate some of the possible different positions in which contact between the dipper or attachments and the boom or machinery deck can occur. More particularly, FIG. 2 shows the handle pulled back towards the housing, with the dipper contacting the boom. FIG. 3 shows the dipper lower, with the handle pulled back. FIG. 4 shows the dipper in the tuck position, with the dipper contacting the machinery deck and the boom.
Boom limit systems currently utilize a passive control design to prevent damage to the shovel. The boom limit system establishes a “slow down” and “zero speed” region based on offsets from a physical boom profile. As the operator enters a region, specific limitations are applied to the operator's references to prevent a potential impact.
Currently, there are two basic approaches to determining if there is a potential for contact between the dipper and the boom. One approach uses a substantial amount of information about all of the various components, to attempt to calculate a very exact dipper position. If an exact dipper position is known, then the dipper's position relative to the boom and machinery deck is also known. Although effective, the number of calculations required results in a serious amount of computational power being needed. Further, this adds a delay time to the control of the motors. Since the motor control needs to react to the potential of the dipper contacting the boom, slower motor change calculations result in the need to increase the dipper slow down region in order to stop potential boom contact. The other approach, at the other extreme, has been to use a fairly simple linear relationship between the crowd count and the hoist count, in order to determine when the dipper is nearing contact with the boom. Although effective, the linear approach results in the need for the region where impact might be possible to be much larger than it might be otherwise. This results in dipper slowdown at times when it is not necessary. This results in it taking longer for the shovel to complete its dig and dump cycle. This results in a crucial slowdown of dipper operation by the operator.